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South Park: The Complete Eleventh Season
R1 - America - Paramount Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (6th October 2008). |
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The Show
 Making a show last eleven seasons is no small feat. A simple answer would be to say that making a show last that long takes an incredible amount of creativity and will power, but without fail the tone and the bounce of the show changes around the 8th or 9th season. Then the show starts to run dry and the creative juices just aren’t as sweet as they have been. It rapidly becomes more apparent that it’s more about the money rather than just having the confidence to walk away. “South Park: The Complete Eleventh Season” confirms how cracks in the 9th and 10th seasons have eroded into gaping holes that have left it nearly un-enjoyable for me. In the eleventh season, “South Park” deals with a Cartman-Butters-photo sex scandal, a secret Easter conspiracy, setting records in Guitar Hero and the 3 part Imaginationland saga that already saw a separate release on its own. The larger budgets and technical mastery are really apparent in this season, which seems to be moving farther and farther away from its paper cutout styled roots and more towards more typical animation styles. While the Imaginationland trilogy has some great moments in the battle of the good characters of the imagination versus the evil, but overall the season demonstrated how “South Park” has become the formulaic show that it originally set out to mock. Most episodes revolve around over-reactions to a ridiculous, outrageous, or otherwise edgy idea, while Stan (Trey Parker) and Kyle (Matt Stone) remain fairly level headed unless it means reacting to one of Cartman’s (Trey Parker) anti-Semitic, racist, plain idiotic, or otherwise ignorant scheme/statement/plan. While earlier seasons of the show were aimed more at satirizing the way that many children’s shows would come along with heavy handed moral statements at the end of the episodes, the eleventh season shows the descent into heavy libertarian moralizing that simply represents the show’s creator’s opinions. “South Park: The Complete Eleventh Season” lacks the comedic spark of earlier seasons and just doesn’t strike me as that funny overall. Granted, there are funny moments and the Imaginationland battles are enjoyable to watch, but these don’t compensate for the general lack of comedy in the season. Far too many of the plots of recent yearsend with some sort of ‘they’re both wrong, we’re the only ones that are right’ moralizing that comes off as pretentious and annoying. Here’s a list of the Episodes included on this season: – "With Apologies to Jesse Jackson" - "Cartman Sucks" - "Lice Capades" - "The Snuke" - "Fantastic Easter Special" - "D-Yikes" - "Night of the Living Homeless" - "Le Petit Tourette" - "More Crap" - "Imaginationland" - "Imaginationland, Episode II" - "Imaginationland, Episode III" - "Guitar Queer-O" - "The List"
Video
The season is presented in it’s original 1.33:1 visual format, which should give the same condition and resolution as it originally aired, but it seems like the transfer has downgraded the quality. Though not immediately obvious, some scenes have some real pixel issues with some jagged ugly looking lines which once they’re spotted become glaring and really annoying. However otherwise the transfer is fine and the colors and style are all left intact as they originally aired.
Audio
Again keeping with the original format, the English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo audio presentation sounds exactly as it originally aired. The levels stay fine and everything comes through with the same quality as it does on TV, though I’m surprised that there’s not even an option for a higher quality track. Overall there are no real glaring issues with the same scores and music that are usually heard, including Primus’ opening audio. There are no optional subtitles available at all on this set.
Extras
The 3-disc set is largely devoid of “South Park” related special features, including only mini-commentaries on every episode in addition to a handful of bonus clips from other comedy central shows and some bonus trailers. DISC ONE: The set of mini-commentaries lasts maybe 5 or so minutes per episode where Matt Stone and Trey Parker briefly discuss their inspiration for the episode. While it’s nice to see that they took the time to put some form of commentary on the set and it has some small nuggets of information, it’s disappointing that they couldn’t take the time to sit through and talk about the entire episode. It almost may have been easier for them to compile their 5 minutes of comments per episode into a featurette since they mostly talk about the entire episode in 5 minutes rather than any kind of discussion of specific scenes as they come along. Here are the Comedy Central quickies which are a set of clips from other Comedy Central Shows which pretty much serve the same purpose as trailers, but without any kind of voice-over, they include: - “Lil’Bush – Spring Break” runs for 2 minutes and 18 seconds. Lil’ Bush raves about how cool his dad is before he and his friends go camping for spring break. - “The Daily Show – Marines In Berkeley” runs for 2 minutes and 31 seconds. Rob Riggle reports on the protests in Berkeley over the Marines Recruiting station. - “Reno 911! – Terry’s Fiancée” runs for 2 minutes and 30 seconds. The Sheriff department talks to Terry, who is accused of male prostitution, while he waits to be picked up by his girlfriend. - “The Colbert Report – Tip/Wag Afghanistan” runs for 2 minutes 9 seconds. Colbert satirizes Bush’s comments on being envious of the multiple tours of duty the armed forces are being asked to perform. Also included on this disc are 3 start-up bonus trailers: - “Kenny vs. Spenny: Uncensored: Season 1” runs for 1 minute 25 seconds. - “Comedy Central’s TV Funhouse (Uncensored)” runs for 1 minute 32 seconds. - “Drawn Together” runs for 1 minute 35 seconds. DISCS TWO & THREE: Also include more of those mini-commentaries on the episodes by Matt Stone and Trey Parker are included. Aside from these there are no other extras on these two remaining discs.
Packaging
This 3-disc set is packaged in a fold-out digi-pack housed in a cardboard slip-case.
Overall
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